The Radio Planet · the cast credit index
Wait — they had a radio show?
Radio transfers almost never carry a cast list. This index finds the film stars hiding in the shelf anyway.
Two kinds of evidence, kept apart. A named credit is a transfer whose own label says who is in it — the archive's assertion, not ours. Their pictures on the air are films they made that one of the screen-adaptation runs restaged; the radio cast was sometimes the picture's own players and sometimes not, so nothing here is billed as an appearance we cannot prove. Where a star genuinely never worked radio, the card says so.
26
Careers checked
325
Named credits found
267
Adaptations held
3
Never at a microphone
The index
Every career, most-credited first
1915–1998
Frank Sinatra
The singer who took the detective's part
Sinatra had years of variety radio and, in 1953, a whole detective series: Rocky Fortune.
1922–1969
Judy Garland
The girl who grew up on the air
Garland has a whole journey of her own on this site — she was a network regular from 1935 onward.
1915–1985
Orson Welles
The man who owned the medium
Welles is the one film star whose radio work outweighs the pictures: Mercury Theatre, Campbell Playhouse, Harry Lime.
1901–1960
Clark Gable
The King, on loan to the microphone
Gable was a reluctant but frequent radio guest, and his pictures were adapted relentlessly.
1904–1986
Cary Grant
Comedy's straightest man
Grant carried a sitcom of his own in 1951 — Mr. and Mrs. Blandings — on top of a long anthology record.
1911–2004
Ronald Reagan
Sportscaster, contract player, president
Reagan began behind a microphone calling ballgames, and worked the Hollywood anthologies throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
1899–1957
Humphrey Bogart
The private eye and the reluctant hero
Bogart worked radio steadily, and with Lauren Bacall carried a whole series of his own in Bold Venture.
1908–1997
James Stewart
The decent man under pressure
Stewart later starred in the western series The Six Shooter; the anthologies had him first.
1901–1992
Marlene Dietrich
The voice built for a loudspeaker
Dietrich broadcast to Allied and German audiences alike during the war; her own series, Time for Love, has not surfaced in any archive.
1893–1973
Edward G. Robinson
The gangster who ran a newspaper
Robinson led Big Town as editor Steve Wilson for years — a starring radio run, not a guest spot.
1907–1990
Barbara Stanwyck
Suspense's finest hour, twice over
Stanwyck's radio work is thick on the ground, and Sorry, Wrong Number belongs to Agnes Moorehead — a distinction the shelf keeps straight.
1911–1993
Vincent Price
The Saint, and every villain after
Price led The Saint on radio and was one of the medium's most reliable leading men.
1924–2014
Lauren Bacall
The voice that made the microphone unnecessary
Bacall's radio work runs through her husband's: the Bold Venture transfers are the fullest record of her at a microphone.
1908–1989
Bette Davis
The best-served actress on radio
Davis restaged her own pictures more often than almost anyone, and turned up in Suspense besides.
1916–2003
Gregory Peck
The upright lead of the post-war years
Peck arrived just late enough to be a radio regular for a decade rather than a generation.
1915–1982
Ingrid Bergman
Hollywood's imported conscience
Bergman played her own screen parts on the air through the 1940s, Joan of Arc included.
1926–1962
Marilyn Monroe
The star radio only just caught
Two authenticated radio appearances survive: a 1951 dramatic lead in Statement in Full and a comedy spot with Edgar Bergen's Charlie McCarthy.
1900–1974
Agnes Moorehead
Radio's first lady, on screen by accident
Moorehead came from Welles's Mercury company; Sorry, Wrong Number is hers before it is anyone's.
1907–2003
Katharine Hepburn
The one who refused the microphone
Hepburn distrusted radio and kept away from it. The shelf holds her pictures, staged by other actresses — which is the record, not an oversight.
1907–1979
John Wayne
The western, personified
Wayne's own name almost never survives on a transfer label. What does survive are the pictures — Stagecoach above all — restaged for the microphone.
1916–2020
Kirk Douglas
The clenched jaw of the late studio era
Douglas came up as radio was giving way to television, so his name is scarce on the shelf while his pictures are not.
1917–1997
Robert Mitchum
Film noir's heavy-lidded lead
No authenticated transfer names Mitchum outright. His pictures, though, were anthology staples.
1923–2008
Charlton Heston
Radio's last new film star
Heston worked the tail end of network drama; the surviving labels rarely credit him, but his early pictures were adapted while the anthologies still ran.
1929–1982
Grace Kelly
Television's find, not radio's
Kelly came up in live television, not network radio. No authenticated radio transfer of hers has surfaced; her pictures arrived after the anthologies had thinned out.
1929–1993
Audrey Hepburn
The star who arrived after the microphones went quiet
Hepburn's Hollywood career begins in 1953, by which time the star anthologies were closing. Nothing authenticated survives; the gap is the record.
1931–1955
James Dean
Three pictures, no radio
Dean worked live television and the stage in the years before his death. No authenticated radio recording is known to exist anywhere.